An Essay on the Daegal Theory by ValkyrieVeela
by ValkyrieVeela
Summary: A brief and unedited essay on my theory about Daegal's origins.


An Essay on the Daegal Theory by ValkyrieVeela

The theory of Daegal's origins, or the Daegal Theory, is the invention of fanfiction authoress ValkyrieVeela, also the authoress of this very essay on the matter, so as to best clarify it. The theory itself is, in its basest form, thus: that Daegal is, in fact, the son of Merlin Emrys and Lady Freya of the Lake of Avalon.

In order to fully put forth that theory, we must first and foremost examine the facts – the facts being that at the time of his arrival into the story of Merlin, the boy Daegal is around fifteen years old and his supposed mother, Freya, has resided in the Lake of Avalon for roughly eight years. Going back to the time of Merlin and Freya's meeting, one can safely assume that three days' acquaintance is quite enough for the process of babymaking, and as I for one have no desire to attempt to prove this altercation – indeed, no more than you yourself, dear reader – we shall curb our curiosity and leave our presumptions as mere assumptions, no more.

Now, onto the Sidhe. As we learnt in S5E13, the Sidhe hold the Power of Life and Death; after all, they would have had the power to save even Arthur's life had the Lady Morgana not intervened. As it is, we know that Lady Freya was killed quite irrevocably and that she was laid to rest in the Sidhe territory of Avalon. Should she have been alive at the time of her transference to the Lake, the bargain might have been struck as her life for her child's – that is, the prolonging of Freya's life for the months that she carried Daegal until his birth; however, if one chooses to take into consideration the life of the Bastet spirit inside her, then one might theorise that the Sidhe were willing to exchange the half-life of the Bastet for the potential life of a human child, though it would, of course, be a little more complex: they would first have to use the spirit-life of the Bastet to allow Freya's body the life it would require to carry Daegal to term, then, at the moment of his birth, taking that spirit-life from her and transferring it to baby Daegal to allow him to live fully and independently of his mother. In utero – and a mostly dead utero at that – Daegal would have been privilege to a mere half-life and would have required a sort of top-up in order to survive, having already once died in his mother's womb at the time of her death. Though the Sidhe do not particularly care for human life, least of all for the continuation of the bloodline of Emrys, but a human life has far more uses than the spirit of a Bastet.

One might now presume one or both of two things: the first possibility is that, as witnessed in the case of the Princess Elena (circa S3E6), the Sidhe chose to use the son of Emrys as a host for one of their own to use against him at some point in the future. The second possibility, one that is quite possible to use in conjunction with the first and is possibly the more likely in any case, is that the Sidhe kept the boy as a slave of sorts, as is traditional for their kin in folktales and legends. Daegal would probably have been separated from his mother as she became a noble of sorts and he, in all likelihood, a lowly serving boy indeed, growing up in much the same way as his father might have done: as a bastard and a secret and a menial labourer in the lowest tier of his native society.

However, the Daegal that we observed in S5E8 was a world-weary one. Whilst according to our theory he might have come by this view from his treatment at the hands of the Sidhe, it seems to me that he more likely experienced this treatment in the world of men, too, and for this to have occurred, he must have spent some time in the world outside of the Lake. Here, we come to the more mathematical aspect of our narrative. As I stated at the beginning of this essay, the facts are that in between Daegal's assumed conception and his meeting with Merlin at age fifteen, only eight years have passed. Now, as I rather enjoy this quite beautiful little loophole, I shall explain it in detail: first, in S3E6, The Changeling, we observe that in order to see the Sidhe and Avalon at all, Merlin was forced to use magic to slow down time. Assuming that the Sidhe, immortal as they are, live at double the speed of the mortal realm, Daegal might appear to have aged at twice the speed that one might expect upon his reentry to the world of men. Given that we presume that his age is fifteen, he would have to have spent seven years, including the four and a half months before his birth, in Avalon, leaving him a year to spend in Camelot. This adds up in the realm of folklore as well as mathematics; in the tale of Tamlin, for example, the time period of seven years and a day is the time in which one might remain in the faerie kingdom before one is trapped there forever. Trusting that Freya would have attempted to care for her son from afar if she was not permitted to truly be his mother, we could now say that either the Sidhe themselves chose to let the slave boy free out of the goodness of their hearts, which, somehow, seems unlikely, or that Freya engineered her son's escape from the Lake and into the world in which his father still lived.

Due to Daegal's somewhat ambiguous explanation of his origins, we can of course 'prove' this theory in some small manner. He says that his mother was 'not a Druid' but that 'she was like [Merlin] though', this matches our version of events as Freya was, in fact, thrown out of the Druid camps due to her curse, and of course we inferred long ago from the conversations Merlin had with Freya and the very fact of Freya's position as the Lady of a magical Lake that Freya herself did, in fact, have magic, despite the minor detail of her never seeming to have used it. The knowledge that Daegal's mother was killed by Uther does not actually disprove my claims either; after all, Arthur might have struck her a mortal blow but he did so by order of the King. Finally, Daegal also asserts that he has done little good in his life; we can dismiss this, of course, as it is far more likely that Daegal has simply had no opportunity to do much particular good, and has probably done next to no bad save that which he was forced to do in the way of survival in the world of men.

From this, I am quite sure that we might agree to conclude that it is entirely possible, though entirely unlikely, that Daegal was the son of Merlin and Freya and that he died in the service of his father, or, more precisely, in the sevice of Emrys and the Once and Future King.

Rather a shame, really.


End file.
